Prof. Tamim Asfour was an invited speaker at the Humanoid Robots for Real Applications Use workshop, IEEE-RAS Humanoids 2017 in Birmingham, UK on November 15, 2017

Whereas traditional robotic systems have paved the path in various applications and are renewing the landscape of future industry and our societal culture, the main usage of humanoid robot platforms is still confined to laboratory research and development despite the noticeable advances that are made in various aspects of humanoid technology. Yet recent needs that appeared from various application fields would be ready to adopt humanoid technology shall it fulfill specifications in terms of functionalities but also reliability and safety.

The problem that we witness now is that no humanoid platform is readily available to make such a jump, and more importantly, no known robotic arms industry seems to be strongly willing to build such systems for effective business, with the exception of SoftBank Robotics for domotics and marketing.

The aim of this workshop is to gather speakers around a topic of high importance in humanoid research and development: how far are we in achieving humanoid robots or transfer humanoid technology for real-use applications? What are the ingredients that make such an endeavor possible? What are the bottlenecks in terms of research and development that could make such a perspective a viable one?

Therefore, the workshop will gather a set of the main representative actors in current projects of well-identified end-users of humanoid technology and those industries that can potentially build it. The idea is to share opinion and raise discussions not on the research perspectives only but also on the non-said practical issues that are fuzzy and not clear to researchers. For instance, what business-plans are possible for humanoid robots? How costs can be reduced despite the complexity of the structure? What inhibits well-known robotic arms providers to build and commercialize humanoid robots? What prohibits companies that have already the technology to go further with innovation plans? From the industrial viewpoints, where research and development of humanoids should focus?